Searching for Wi-Fi on One of Russia’s Oldest Train Cars, Platzkart

There’s nothing like leaving the money-slicked city of Moscow. It’s hard to say goodbye to a hotel bed fat with feathers, the clean-shaven doormen who smell like tangerines, and the heaps of glistening, orange caviar. Here, I bleed rubles from my bank card: Thanks to a bevy of sanctions, I get to live like a queen in a country with a constantly faltering currency. And did I tell you about the view? It’s beautiful because the Kremlin is right across from my hotel, but I actually haven’t stepped foot onto the square of St. Basil’s cupolas once this week. I don’t need to: Here, the world that I live in is radiating with Wi-Fi. I’m still plugged into America. Thanks to technology, even thousands of miles away, I find myself deeply drowning in love, waiting for a signal, for that ex-boyfriend to text and reaffirm that I exist. Or maybe I’m holding out for those little likes floating in from Instagram to give me a spike of dopamine. Turns out, even after a week, I’ve never actually been in Moscow—and I’ve sure as hell have never been in Russia.

But right now, I’m an hour outside of Moscow, or rather, I’m nowhere. The political situation is shifty at present, so there are no direct flights from Moscow to Kiev, my next destination. To bypass this mess, I’ve chosen to revert to throwback transportation: I’m traveling by train; more specifically, I’m going by platzkart for roughly 12 hours. It’s a section of the train that has been virtually unchanged since the time of the Soviet Union—one of the cheapest cars of them all. The creaky hub is a public, communal space that resembles a tight grocery aisle: The people are like little loaves of bread neatly stacked and placed into their bunk-bed sections. There are four humans to a space and a table that divides two bunks from the other side. There is a bit of luxury, like a red rug, a prized hangover from years before, which splays down the middle of the hallway. It’s a nice touch, especially when the walls look like they are plastered with linoleum stripped from a diner.

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Photo: Courtesy of @funny_vlady

As for right now, there is a man creaking down the hallway of the train with a dolly that’s getting caught in the carpet. He’s selling bottles of water, chocolate wafers, and flat bottles of bootleg cola. He looks like a barber with his little bow tie and white doctor’s coat. My neighbor, a woman in her 40s, is complaining about the prices. The two perspiring men in the cart next to me are peeling dried fish and cutting up tomatoes. From the top bunk across the hall, a woman’s pudgy, bare ankles are wagging from the edge of her bed. As for me? I’m sitting on my neighbor’s unmade bottom bunk, still frantically trying to turn in an article to America.

But my fancy iPhone doesn’t work in these remote areas—my outbox is a Sisyphean nightmare with an email that just keeps revolving in this no-service hell. See, platzkart is not made for working. It becomes a mobile shell with jacked-up heat—a hot and stuffy space where you’re forced to make conversation with your neighbors, chugging tea and breaking bread. So I start talking. In three minutes, I have made friends for the first time this week. They are two women: Lyudmila and Lyuba. Lyudmila tells me that her daughter is in San Francisco and doesn’t want to come back. Lyuba doesn’t talk much, but is sweet with what little she says. When I try to make my bed, the top bunk, the duo helps me stretch the sheets over the mattress, referring to me as “child.” And when I try to lift a heavy suitcase for them, they tell me to stop: I’m too young to ruin my body before I have a baby.

Our fourth neighbor returns. The squared-jawed man turns out to be a jewelry dealer, and for the last hour he’s been walking through the cars with a tray of shiny things, trying to sell his wares to the passengers. He introduces himself as Sergei and sits below me at the table, organizing the tray of jewelry. I ask to look at a pretty gold ring, and then he asks me why I’m not married. I tell him I’m still waiting for a letter from the love of my life. But really, I’m just waiting for a hello text from some ex through my phone. What I really have my eye on is one of those gold-plated Jesus icons to string around my neck. But I’m a mere pauper here. I have no cash on me. And, of course, without a phone, I’m also bored and anxious. Across from me, Lyudmila is asleep with her arms crossed on her chest. She looks peaceful and doesn’t flinch even as someone starts snoring from his gut the bunk over.

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Photo: Courtesy of @zahydani

I doze off, but I’m awoken by border patrol agents at around 3 a.m. They’re lifting some woman’s mattress and rummaging through a man’s luggage. They always make me nervous, always spending extra time staring at my passport, checking my visa, and looking back at me. But all is fine and they leave. I’m starving, exhausted, and I feel crazy without any money, but in a good way. It’s strangely freeing walking through the filthy, limb-rubbing haven of platzkart, breathing in the sweat of others. Maybe it’s because I feel like I don’t exist anywhere at the moment, as we are in the middle of nowhere. Sans phone service, I can even feel myself falling out of love: I’m watching some guy with a melon head and damp brow sifting through his fanny pack for a cigarette and I kind of want to smash my mouth against his. Like I said, I could do anything in this quiet oasis, which sways slightly from time to time.

I make my way toward the bathroom, which hasn’t been cleaned since the Khrushchev era. Never touch anything there; your skin will fall off. It’s a full-metal toilet in which you can see the train tracks move through the bowl. After I’m done performing a balancing act, I leave and open a door to a tobacco-cloaked Narnia. I’m between carts now with five men in tank tops smoking cigarettes. I bum a thin cigarette from a woman wearing a scrunchie. I never smoke—the smell makes me nauseous back in the States, but I feel immortal in this ashy nirvana. I peer out of the dirt-coated windows: Slavic shanties are flickering through the night. Everyone filters out. It’s kind of calming, shooting through a black hole toward nowhere. I don’t have my iPhone with me. I left the precious piece of metal on my cot begging to get swiped. I squeak away the fog with my palms to look outside. I spot a forest fire; the flames are lashing, licking up far past the trees, almost touching the sky. Then it goes completely black. No embers, no dimly lit homes, just the cherry of my cigarette. For a moment, I think I’d love to jump off this train, completely alone, and bask in this off-the-grid wave of disconnection forever. Hell, maybe I’ll live without a cell phone, too. I could be anything and I could do anything. But the door clangs. Someone else enters the cart and is fiddling on his flip phone, illuminating himself with LED in the corner. For a bit, I ignore him: Platzkart’s pings of happiness shouldn’t be so fleeting.